


It´s a promise that I made (never be afraid)

by mountain_spiderling



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, He´s 7, Honestly I just really love them, IT´S AN ADOPTIVE RELATIONSHIP, Kid Peter Parker, Mr. Peabody & Sherman AU, Parent Tony Stark, Precious Peter Parker, Short One Shot, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Wrote this for father´s day yayy, Y´all going to get diabetes with this much fluff probably, duh - Freeform, scree, well kinda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:53:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24883387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mountain_spiderling/pseuds/mountain_spiderling
Summary: "He hadn´t known how to explain it, not even to himself or to a concerned Rhodey and Pepper. All he knew, when he´d heard that weak cry muffled by the rain and the sounds of the city on a walk back home, was that there was something about the small, fretful boy with a smudged post-it note on his chest that made Tony want to stop and pick him up."Or, Tony and a seven-year old Peter in a "Mr. Peabody and Sherman" AU(Title taken from the song "Way Back When" by Grizfolk)
Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 15
Kudos: 110
Collections: ellie marvel fics - read





	It´s a promise that I made (never be afraid)

**Author's Note:**

> It´s a bit late but happy father´s day Tony Stark!!! I watched Mr. Peabody and Sherman with my sister again a few days ago and my mind immediately went wait but what if it was TONY as the parent and well, here we are. A very short fluffy story based on the "Beautiful Boy" scene in the movie.
> 
> (Also if you haven´t watched it the plot basically involves a genius talking dog adopting a human child and them going on time-travelling shenanigans together :D )

He hadn´t intended on it, but his feet paced with a mind of their own until he was standing in front of the biggest wall in the hallway, still deep in thought. Exhaustion pulled down into every bone in his body, but his mind was still wide awake, poring over the day´s events.

Dozens of pictures hung on the wall, each one portraying a suspended piece of time in his life with Peter over the years. He´d never really been a fan of photographs before, useful in preserving faces and events as they were. He didn´t get those people who seemed to want everything about their drooly children immortalized in pictures.

That, along with everything else in his reality, changed drastically once he´d brought home a drooly baby of his own.

(As far as he was concerned, the stormy night he walked past that alleyway seven years ago would remain the luckiest in his life)

He didn´t want cameras and flashing lights pushed into his son´s face 24/7 (Lord knows he´d gotten enough of that when _he_ was a child) but Peter loved taking and printing pictures of both of them in their travels on the WABAC, and Tony delighted in anything that made Peter happy, so the once blank wall was now overflowing with light and colours coming from the bright images.

The sight of Peter´s beaming gap-toothed smile, eyes scrunched up in mid-laughter, never failed to stir a warmth reserved only for him in Tony´s chest, and as stressful as the day had been, tonight was no exception.

His eyes scanned the pictures, involuntary smile in place, before falling on one of the most recent ones. A newly turned 7-year-old Peter´s eyes were locked determinedly on the path ahead as he rode a bike for the first time, Tony holding it steady from the seat behind him.

He remembered that day clear as anything, remembered the golden leaves falling and rising on a gentle breeze around them, remembered the massive swell of pride and affection he felt once he let go of the bicycle and Peter managed to steer on his own, joyful, incredulous laughter ringing across the sunny street as he looked on at his son.

_“I´m actually doing it!”_

_“That´s right, buddy, look at you! You´ve got it! You´ve really got it!”_

(He might have gotten a little misty-eyed, but neither one minded. He spoiled Peter silly on ice cream afterwards, and the day passed by far too quickly between bicycle lessons and wondering where on Earth the time had gone)

(God, he was getting soft)

(He didn´t mind it in the least)

His eyes moved on to the one showing their time with the Wright brothers, Tony smiling at Peter´s cheers as everything around them blurred in mid-flight. He thinks he dropped the small camera right after the landing, but thankfully he´d managed to salvage the pictures inside. The joyful expressions captured in this one were worth it.

Another frame of them posing near three huge woolly mammoths brought back memories of getting a face-full of freezing milky-white snow when they´d gone skating in the ice age.

(Peter picked up skating surprisingly quickly. Learning how to stop was…another story altogether)

That particular instance had lead to “the mammoth encounter” as Peter liked to call it, where they´d been so distracted observing the huge creatures they hadn´t noticed a new-born calf getting close to them until a trunk started sniffing at Peter´s hair. Tony was terrified, but it´d only touched Peter´s head curiously before running off to join the rest of the herd.

_“What, even ancient Dumbo wants to kidnap my kid now, is that it?” Tony had said, frantically checking him all over for injuries, just in case._

_A 6 year old Peter had just grinned and asked if they could get a pet elephant._

A summer day. A stadium in the background. His kid holding up a baseball proudly in one hand and a bat in the other, a far-too-big baseball cap falling comically over his eyes. (They´d gone all over the world, present at some of the most iconic games in all of history, but Peter loved the METS for some reason. Tony might not have gotten the hype, but he cheered along with him to the games they went to anyway.)

Peter whizzing down a slide at a waterpark, completely drenching an unamused Tony standing nearby (He´s wearing Ironman swimming trunks, obviously). Peter and him riding a rollercoaster, faces contorted in whoops and laughter. Peter giving DUM-E bunny ears. A framed copy of the first drawing his son had ever given him, an endearing crayon scribble of a huge blob holding a smaller one, both smiling widely.

Bit by bit, framed picture after another, Peter´s entire life shared with him came back to him through the pictures, filling Tony with a myriad of so many emotions he didn´t know which one to feel first.

Unadulterated pride and joy for his absolute sunbeam of a kid. A small pang as he realized this was what he´d never had but always yearned for. Nostalgia, as he looked at Peter´s baby pictures and realized he´d never get that time back.

(Okay, maybe he didn’t miss the “never sleeping because a teething baby is scream-crying directly down your earlobe at 3 am” part. Or the diapers. Or the getting thrown up on. But he´d go through that over and over again if it meant he´d get to keep Peter in the end. He was worth all that and more.)

(Also everyone else could _suck_ it _, he´d_ had the cutest freaking baby. That was facts.)

(JARVIS had recorded the whole thing, when he´d been getting Peter something to eat a few weeks after adopting him officially, rambling on distractedly before almost dropping the baby in sheer shock when Peter had babbled a spontaneous “ _da-da!_ ” in return. Looking down at his arms to find a pair of wide chestnut-brown orbs gazing back up at him adoringly had made something in him _melt_. Him. Tony Stark. Melt over a small child.)

_I love you. Gosh, I love you._

(Baby Peter? An entire other level of cute.)

He´d taken Peter to meet scientists, artists, musicians, activists, anyone and everyone across history he´d befriended before, because the once erratic Stark had found the most meaningful discovery of all in a tiny boy, and he was too marvellous not to share the very best of humanity with. Their stories were littered across the pictures as Tony gazed at them, the cheerful echoes of places and moments he now held dear.

He´d cried during Peter´s first piano lesson, remembering how his mother had once played the same keys delicately back to him. What he´d do to go on just one trip on the WABAC and have her meet her grandchild, get just one more hug from her and the human Jarvis, all consequences be damned. But as he watched Peter fumble over the notes slightly, brow furrowed and little tongue stuck out in concentration, he knew he´d never risk destroying reality by going back to one he existed in, no matter how much he wanted to.

He needed to make sure the one right here would be safe enough for his son to grow up in.

The last picture, at the very end of the hall, was actually the newspaper cutting that´d come out the day word got round Tony Stark had been granted guardianship over the one forgotten child he´d found in an alleyway a little more than a week before.

(The judge had raised an eyebrow at Tony´s “How hard could it be?” when referring to raising a human child but he´d relented eventually, thank God.)

There´d been a great uproar and endless commentary about the prospect of the genius raising a child and what´d compelled him to do it.

_He hadn´t known how to explain it, not even to himself or to a concerned Rhodey and Pepper. All he knew, when he´d heard that weak cry muffled by the rain and the sounds of the city on a walk back home, was that there was something about the small, fretful boy with a smudged post-it note on his chest that made Tony want to stop and pick him up._

_Maybe it was his eyes, a shade of brown so identical to Tony´s own engulfed in a sea of tears that screamed a dejection no one so young should have to endure. Perhaps it was his cries, exhausted and miserable but defiant in him just not ready to stop trying to catch someone´s, anyone´s attention._

_It could have been how he looked at Tony when he opened the soggy cardboard box and caught a glimpse of him, a still-teary gaze of “Someone. Someone finally came”._

_(The post-it note was barely readable, but_

_“Peter. Is- that´s your name, right? That´s- yeah okay you can´t answer, right. Uh. Okay. Let´s just- Let´s figure this out."_

_He propped his red umbrella between his shoulder blade and neck so the baby- Peter, his name was Peter- wouldn´t get wet while he used both hands to pick him up, and off they went._

_Neither knew it then, but they´d soon find out they never wanted to let go after that.)_

Today hadn´t been what he was expecting. For all his preparation, they still had a long way to go. But in the meantime, the memory of tucking Peter in bed that night came back to him, the same trusting brown gaze that had compelled him to stay years ago still focused on him, still inadvertently asking him to do whatever it took to keep those eyes curious, to keep that twinkling laughter he loved so much clear and genuine and _bright_.

He could work with the unexpected. After all, some of the best things in life happened to be just that.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you very very much for reading! I hope you enjoyed it :) Kudos and comments make me basically implode with joy so please drop one if you´d like :DDD! Find me on tumblr as freckledmountain, where you can come rant with me about Irondad or say hello. Hope you all have a lovely day! 😊💕


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